Elephants choose direct path to favourite food

Minute data from the footprints of pachyderms could help reduce human-elephant conflict

Sagalla, Kenya.   As human-elephant conflict continues to rise across Africa, researchers are searching for new ways to keep a watchful eye on wild African elephants, even looking to space for guidance.

In the rural community of Sagalla in Tsavo Kenya, a hotspot for crop-raiding elephants, researchers at Save the Elephants and the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford have, for the first time ever, tracked the minute footprints of elephants using a high-resolution hand-held Garmin GPS that captures point to point fixes at every 3-5 seconds, and overlaid it with free high-resolution satellite imagery to identify how plant diversity on a micro scale affects elephant movement.

In the process, they’ve discovered that elephants make considered decisions about which paths to take based purely on their favourite food.  The findings, recently published in the journal, Remote Sensing, may be critical in helping conservationists forecast potential human-elephant conflict (HEC) hotspots.

The Sentinel 2A imagery – obtained through an open-source satellite managed by the European Space Agency, has enabled scientists to map every single piece of vegetation within each 10m pixel in and around Sagalla.  While elephants are normally tracked at 1-hour intervals, the handheld satellite GPS captures all the twists and turns, every thorny thicket, every tree that an elephant would take on its chosen path.  The elephant data from the study covers the period from January 2015 to 2020.

The results show that bull elephants prefer to walk paths that have or lead to plants called Combretum and Cissus which are only eaten by bulls. Family groups will walk paths that have Commiphora and Terminalia, which are a dietary preference for family groups comprising females and young calves. Furthermore, when the two groups combine and move together, they choose paths that have or lead to areas where both preferred delicacies are available, in other words ensuring there’s something for everyone.

The study is important because understanding how elephants access their favourite vegetation could help conservation managers focus resources onto potential conflict hotspots outside protected areas and better protect plant diversity within parks and buffer zones. Mapping the location and composition of specific vegetation species within plant communities also helps scientists to better understand the impact of human encroachment and vegetation removal on elephant movement.

Lead author, Gloria Mugo, says, ‘It is incredible the level of detail we can infer from free satellite imagery about the processes that control the spatial dynamics of elephant movements. A lot is known about what kinds of foods are eaten by elephants, however, being able to single out the fact that their movements can be driven by their fancied, gender-based diet, helps to further our understanding of micro-level ecological interactions.”

Save the Elephants, the University of Oxford and the Sagalla community have been working together since 2009, starting with a project to explore how beehive fences could be used to reduce conflict with elephants. The satellite imagery project came about when the Sagalla community asked the researchers to help them better understand why and where elephants were foraging in the buffer zone of vegetation between the houses and the park boundary.

Dr Lucy King, Department of Biology, University of Oxford and Head of Save the Elephant’s Co-existence Programme said: “The insight that different compositions of elephant groups prefer different vegetation patches could help us better understand where elephants are moving to within community areas to focus mitigation efforts, and also will promote better understanding for management of vegetation quality and composition inside wildlife reserves to keep parks more attractive to elephants inside than outside.”

Key findings

–  Free high-resolution satellite imagery is helping researchers identify how plant diversity on a micro scale affects elephant movement

–  The findings show that elephants make considered decisions about which paths to take based purely on their favourite food

–  The findings may be critical in helping conservationists forecast potential human-elephant conflict (HEC) hotspots when favourite plants overlap with human settlements.

The paper ‘Mapping Floristic Composition Using Sentinal-2A and A Case Study Evaluation of its Application in Elephant Movement in Sagalla, Tsavo,’ has been published in the journal, Remote Sensing  

ENDS/

About Save the Elephants
Based in Kenya, Save the Elephants works to secure a future for elephants. Specializing in elephant research, they provide scientific insights into elephant behavior, intelligence, and long-distance movements and apply them to the challenges of elephant survival. Education and outreach programs share these insights with local communities as the true custodians of this rich heritage. The team works towards a future of harmonious coexistence between humans and elephants. High-tech tracking helps plan landscapes while low-tech beehive fences, among other tools, provide farmers with protection as well as income. To battle ivory poaching, Save the Elephants teamed up with the Wildlife Conservation Network created the Elephant Crisis Fund to identify and support the most effective partners in Africa and in nations with ivory markets to stop poaching, thwart traffickers and end demand for ivory. www.savetheelephants.org

About the University of Oxford
Oxford University has been placed number 1 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for the seventh year running, and ?number 2 in the QS World Rankings 2022. At the heart of this success are the twin-pillars of our ground-breaking research and innovation and our distinctive educational offer.

Oxford is world-famous for research and teaching excellence and home to some of the most talented people from across the globe. Our work helps the lives of millions, solving real-world problems through a huge network of partnerships and collaborations. The breadth and interdisciplinary nature of our research alongside our personalised approach to teaching sparks imaginative and inventive insights and solutions.

Through its research commercialisation arm, Oxford University Innovation, Oxford is the highest university patent filer in the UK and is ranked first in the UK for university spinouts, having created more than 200 new companies since 1988. Over a third of these companies have been created in the past three years. The university is a catalyst for prosperity in Oxfordshire and the United Kingdom, contributing £15.7 billion to the UK economy in 2018/19, and supports more than 28,000 full time jobs.

The Department of Biology is a University of Oxford department within the Maths, Physical and Life Sciences Division. It utilises academic strength in a broad range of bioscience disciplines to tackle global challenges such as food security, biodiversity loss, climate change and global pandemics. It also helps to train and equip the biologists of the future through holistic undergraduate and graduate courses. For more information visit www.biology.ox.ac.uk.